The beginning- Getting used to my new Universe

Getting Used to my new Universe-

 The few times I drove up here to visit, I was terrified by the traffic -ruling 95gangs. 295, 495, 9595- such a rude group of ruffian highways that demand drivers to push hard and move fast. ALL THE TIME.  People drive as if they just won the lottery or they lost and are mad about it. 

At home, it was easy to avoid traffic by being the early bird at the grocery or getting gas. Here it is obvious any early bird was bullied right out of town long ago. I learned that going somewhere at 9am is easier than 6am because many people have landed their crafts at work. The next window that works is 1:30 to 3. After 3, forget it. I have managed to find back ways to almost everywhere I need to go, and I find some relief in knowing there ARE back ways.  I'd much rather be found in a ditch than to be discovered after being run over beyond recognition on the highway. It's the little things.

My comfort zone has been about one mile in diameter. I have always been able to walk to work, grocery, church, CharGrill, or Snoopys if I wanted to. I remember feeling that a 30-minute trip required a passport, so I rarely went outside of my zone. Here, 30 minutes is a blink.

I had a huge fear of not doing things right that were really important to do when you move, and the anxiety/paranoia won out over the brain fog. What if I  messed up getting a new driver's license? Sensibility tends to disappear when anxiety rules and my inner voices reminded me I was in or near WASHINGTON, DC-where the FBI lived, and Quantico was just over there so, ugh.  

On top of everything else, I was figuring out Social Security retirement and Medicareless.  What if Social Security decided to drop me. I mean it could do that, right? I only knew Social Security as something that came out of my paycheck but now, It WAS my paycheck.  And the only insurance I had known was the one you paid for through work, and then you went where you needed to go and paid a co-pay. This Medicare- didn't. It didn't Care, and certainly did not/ does not make much of anything easy. How does that make sense? You work all your life and when you finally reach the age of not having to work, you are expected to still have an active mensa brain so you can figure out how to manage these foreign bodies. What I lost in brain speed I picked up in joint pain and  wrinkles. The tradeoff is not really fair.  So, I surrendered. It allowed me to embrace inappropriate humor in non-humorous situations. Thankful. Thankful Thankful.

I eventually was able to get most of the Things-I-don't-want-to-do list done online, so car insurance, bank account, library cards, and other minutia was doable despite my crazy inner voices. Slowly, I felt myself being open to some positives in learning about this new world when I discovered this state did not require annual inspections on cars!  I was foolishly relieved. What that really means is that cars are inspected once, and they follow a very long list that covers things the people who make the cars don't even know. So, when I took my car to get its one-time inspection, I walked out $800 poorer. My little car drove as if it had been violated, and I don't blame it.  It took a few days to find the celebration in that once-in-a-lifetime car inspection. I settled on relief that it was over.

The girls walked me through so many other littlebig things, and that helped. I began to settle, sort of, but not really for a long long while.  At any rate, I was glad to have nonsensical perspective back.

Arrival

 I arrived to open arms, smiles, and lots of happy hugs. Respite care came in a package of delightful little ones who acted like this was exactly where they expected me to be. My daughter and son gave me their room and had brought a few pictures they had confiscated over Christmas that I had not even missed in my frantic packing- until I saw them hanging on the wall.  I felt the love and I felt wanted. 

I was so thankful, but I would not realize the many small and major shifts  I had caused in my own person for a good year. I needed time to forgive myself, too, for not being able to adjust as easily as I thought I could. Being with the girls and son-in-law was easy. So easy and right. Once my feet felt the ground, the every dayness gave me challenges I hadn't really thought about. I left a life of living alone, and stepped back in time to my most favored era, except now, I was 30 years older, so the pace knocked me flat a lot. Figuring out how people schedule, eat, and how to find my way around,.. You know, the myriad of things you have to learn when you land on another planet and in another time. Even in the midst of certainty that this was what I needed to do,  I still wondered who stole the path? 

The positives were as healing and reliable as the tides. I got lost a few times while trying to figure out new walking routes, which made me feel low, but often the grandgirls would be waiting for me to return, and it eased the anxiety. One morning I heard a distant, "Minny!" as I was heading back, and there were two little girls waiting for me on the front porch in their pjs. Sometimes, I'd sing part of a song when I got close and  I could hear their voices from their bedroom window singing along. These offerings of acceptance and interest made me feel so much more at ease. 

The grown-ups in the house had no expectations of me. I think it took a while for them to believe I had actually made the move. As hard as I tried to force some kind of expectations from both daughters and son, they just didn't have any other than they were glad we were able to be together. I wore myself out trying to pitch in cleaning, figuring out how to follow their system of laundry, doing dishes, whatever I could guess to try, but these attempts were always taken as unexpected surprises. Well, with the exception of one habit I had brought with me. 

Raising 4 children, working and trying to manage life during those early years, I developed a habit that did not drop off after the chicks had flown the coop. Before I had children, I was a real planner. I kept multiple to-do lists. I found great power in checking things off of my list. When I had my first daughter, I realized this old way was not possible and over time, my lists dwindled in number and length. By child #4, I had one list and it had things on it like- get up or brush teeth. get dressed. I mean, the desperation for that sense of accomplishment was vicious! 

Similar situation with household tasks. There may be piles of laundry to do, and beds unmade, but by golly, I was going to go to bed with a clean kitchen and no dishes left out. So I started picking up the random plate or glass when I spotted them left behind. As the girls grew older, the left behinds often had a good reason to be there, but still, like a robot with power on, I'd walk by a table and pick up a glass, and put it in the dishwasher. Then, later, "Mom, where is my water glass?" It became a joke among the girls and the habit remains alive and well, and was one of many quirks that followed me here. 

I recall hearing my son-in-law, asking to anyone within hearing distance, "Where's my cup?" "Anybody see my glass?" "Where's the leftover half taco? I wasn't done with it." Depending on who was home, the answer would come- "Check the dishwasher" "MOM!" Eventually, they came up with a great plan and put a small tray inside the glass cabinet and made sure I knew that any glasses there, needed to stay put. Same with leftovers. I learned that late-night snacks were often the tail end of dinner crumbs.  This may seem silly to say, but I had accepted the habit I had acquired, with good reason initially, over time, despite the fact that it was not needed anymore. The thing was, my son had not grown up with someone who kept confiscating his food and drink, yet, he never got angry. Maybe he looked on it as a game, because sometimes, I would see him rushing for a cup before I could get it, or saying to me, "Please don't throw away this nugget." I love him more for that. 

So much to learn. How and who was I  now? Look out, because here come the trials and tribulations of aged learning, friends. 

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Times are changin' Back to writing. THE MOVE

 Wow, stepping out of the Twilight Zone took longer than I thought. Are you still there? I'm hoping so. After my last entry, life kept happening. Day in, day out. I got my vaccines when they were hard to catch a hold of, and I kept working. In the quiet. Every day. I made masks until my Singer wouldn't sing anymore. I mailed them to everyone I knew or heard of. It was fun while it lasted. 

I had a lot of time to think in those days, those long, scary quiet days. The news kept saying "It ain't over yet" and I began to realize that we didn't know when or if it would ever be over. The chemistry at the church was rapidly changing.My boss and I shared a retirement timeline. We had agreed to step off the pier together. We learned about Medicare together, well- what one can learn about that tangle. 

As my 17th anniversary approached, I reminisced about the many stories this job has given me. Many I haven't even started writing yet. I loved the interactions with members, making new friends, learning so many new things, and I loved that I changed the Church Secretary Job into a Church Caretaker job. I stretched the job description like a Stretch Armstrong to meet the needs of the shifting church. It was good, and hard, and awesome and not so awesome. I could see the needs had changed during the Covidity, with a change in administration, several familiar folks retiring,lots of changes to come and one day, I just knew it was time. 

We all are experiencing the damdemic- then and now. We have no choice, as we are in it. IN IT. so we have been actively participating in history being made. Similar to my thoughts on what was behind that fateful Fall I took in 2016,I realized there was something significant in this worldly chaotic tumbling. 

Most folks I knew had created safety bubbles where they could actually be in the company of someone else and that brought with it some sense of a long lost normalcy. Families became even more important than love makes them anyway. I had formed a couple of tiny bubbles- I spoke to my therapist outside, met my regular Wed night dinner friend outside, and walked during lunch with a friend, but we had to talk real loud due to social distancing and well, let's just say the neighborhood learned pretty quickly about our topics of sharing. Sometimes, when we walked, I'd notice  a face at the window, or someone pretending to work in their yard- sign to us a nod or a thumbs up or a shake of the head to let us know their opinion on our discussions. ugh. weird. 

I did not have family I could reach out and touch. Time dragged through the fear of the times, but in the places my daughters lived, time was speeding by. The Fall had taken me out of much availability for the births of both of my grandgirls. Three years of surgeries and healing and more surgeries and more healing kept me from being as connected as I wanted to be. So, time and I had a talk and one day I knew what i needed to do. and I did. 

I gave my two weeks notice, and took some time to adjust to the changes from working  most of my life to not working. 

The holidays brought us together with distance and masking and when they drove off for home, I waved, picked up my aching heart and made a plan. There were so many avenues of unknowns in this decision, I was sure Raleigh DOT had drawn up the plans, so you can understand my anxiety and concerns. 

Making a change such as the one I was hanging onto meant pulling up roots that had been planted 52 years ago when I moved here. It meant leaving behind friends I loved and places I knew. It meant giving up my penchant for rescuing plants and starting Messy Chef somewhere else where no one knew me. New walking routes. It meant starting a new life called retirement. What was That? Different. That's what it was- Different. All of those things are big things. How could I walk through that? I was scared but for the one thing that was even bigger. My girls. My big girls, my little grand girls, my son in law who was brave enough to marry into a family of girls. So- I decided to break it up into tiny pieces and big breaths. 

As in my previous move, I took time every day and put freebies on my front porch, took throw aways to the dumpster, and put what was going with me in the spare room. I sold furniture until I had only one chair to sit in. I talked to moving companies and decided to go with a person from church who had started a business called POOF. I ordered tons of bubble wrap and packing tape. I got my vaccines. and I left the place I had lived  in through high school, marriage, raising a family, Messy cheffing, and plant escapades. 

The damdemic times were my cover. No fanfare, last lunches, long reminiscent talks. I just drove away and pushed my scared spirit into the passenger seat so I could drive. She cried for me, and slept alot while I drove home to my girls.